Of the Dead
by misgiving
Summary: Sirius, Regulus and the large gap between them. [ one shot ]


**Disclaimer: **Harry Potter and everything concerning him belongs to J. K. Rowling.

_Alright, so I wrote this before but after a short while I got very disappointed with it so I removed it and rewrote it and changed a great deal of it. But here it is again, still concerning Sirius and Regulus. _

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**Of the dead**

His mother claimed that there must have been some kind of mistake and that he would have to try on the hat again and be sorted again. He didn't want to be sorted again and Dumbledore claimed that he would most likely end up in Gryffindor again, because obviously that was where he belonged.

His mother was furious and sent both her son and the headmaster howlers (_and the howlers kept coming through all his years at school and she blamed him for everything that went wrong_) but Sirius merely laughed at them when they exploded and grinned and waved at anyone who turned around to look at who got the howler.

_It's sort of sad_, Remus once said. _A mother shouldn't hate her child_.

Sirius had snorted and corrected him; _A child shouldn't hate their mother._

When his brother started school, Sirius brought him to sit in _his_ compartment with _his _friends and he hoped and wished that Regulus would be like him but he almost knew that it was hopeless to wish for wishes never come true and Regulus was different from him and Regulus had always been afraid of disobeying their mother.

Durning the summers, Regulus would spend sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and listening when their mother shouted at Sirius and Sirius yelled back and slammed his door and their mother would wonder where they had gone wrong with him.

(_He remembered the first time he was to go to Hogwarts and he remembered how Regulus and his mother had seen him off at the station and he had waved and smiled and had at that moment been happier than he had ever been before. His mother had looked proud and happy too and she had smiled for the first time in a very long time and it was the last time she smiled at him._

_But then Sirius was sorted and was at first scared out of his wits about what his parents would say. But then he was quick to realise that he didn't have to care what his parents thought of him and so he_ _just didn't care. __He was so tired of caring and so tired being afraid. _

_A child shouldn't have to be afraid of their mother._)

His new friends at school were, however, different from Regulus and didn't seem to like Regulus too much and Sirius felt disappointed. He had _hoped_ and _wished_ that they would all get along because Regulus was, after all, his brother who had been his only friend during their childhood. But Sirius wondered why he liked his new friends better than he liked his brother and he wondered if it was because his new friends were different from Regulus or if it was because they were more like him than his brother would ever be. Maybe that was why the two brothers grew apart and Sirius didn't want to think about that.

It had never been meant to be like that.

Regulus was sorted and Sirius was disappointed. What Sirius didn't understand was that his entire family was disappointed in him too and both brothers turned out to be traitors in the end.

Regulus saw Sirius with his friends at school and he saw him laughing and Regulus thought Sirius had always laughed too much. He had always laughed when he wasn't allowed to laugh (_all those time at home when he had laughed at the dinner table just to make their mother mad and all those times he had laughed at their cousins at the family dinners just to make them mad_ (because he knew they would be) _and he would even die laughing, which almost seemed too fitting_) and that was just one of the things that made Sirius, Sirius.

_He loved Sirius more than anything else but he _was _different no matter what Sirius constantly repeated and he would never be able to change because then their mother would hate him too and he didn't want to become the traitor_.

Sirius remembered all the times at home when they were younger and when he and Regulus had been sitting on the stairs that lead upstairs and played their childhood games and Regulus had been his best friend (_because he never wanted to play with the children of their parents' friends_) and Regulus would listen to his all stories and be flabbergasted and beg him to tell him the same stories over and over again. Always the same ones.

Regulus thought Sirius had always talked too much.

But then Sirius ran away from home and things got worse. Their mother pretended that she had only one son and he was _such a good_ son. At school, Regulus pretended not to have a brother and tried to avoid Sirius by all means, and Sirius noticed and tried to talk to his brother anyway. He caught Regulus' arm once or twice in the hallways as he passed by and pulled him into a halt just to exchange a word or two. Regulus would wait patiently while Sirius said what he wanted to have said and then Regulus would give him a cold stare before he marched down the hall without replying.

_Is mother telling you to act like this?_ Sirius called after him but Regulus had already gone around the corner and during those days Sirius's mood were always bad and he made James and Peter (and sometimes Remus too, but not always because he did not approve) go with him to hex Snivellus, because Sirius knew that usually cheered him up.

(_Sometimes Regulus did reply, but only with a couple of well chosen words that were meant to hurt_.)

Sirius knew he had already lost his brother years before but when he really did lose him, he cried (and Lily comforted him because James asked her to) but he only cried once because he had mourned his brother for years already, yet during those years, he never cried and Lily never had to put her arms around him and tell him things would be alright.

After that, Sirius felt far more lonely than he had ever felt before in his entire life even though his friends were always with him but losing them too was like losing his brother all over again and there was no Lily to comfort him. After that Sirius had to spend too much by himself in a too small room and he hated being alone and the only thing he could laugh over was that at least he wasn't buried alive even though it felt like that would have been a better antidote for his betrayal and grief.

(_Sirius would forever remain young at heart because he never had a chance to grow up properly and Regulus had grown up far too early and both brothers died too early in life and Regulus' last thoughts had included Sirius but Sirius would never know that his brother did still love him and still thought the world of him._)

Regulus had died alone in the end and Sirius died for those he loved.

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_Review?_


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